Chechnya: Russia get out now

By Vicken Cheterian, Le Monde diplomatique, April
2002

Moscow is still stuck in the Chechen quagmire, despite all its claims
that it is dealing with the ‘terrorism’. Russian army
atrocities have failed to crush resistance, Chechens no longer
collaborate; both sides will have to return to negotiating a
settlement, and better sooner than later.

A Russian military patrol hits a mine and is targeted by machine gun
and rocket fire. Young soldiers fall to the ground, dead and wounded,
with their trucks and tanks in flames. Chechen fighters withdraw. A
few hours later Russian reinforcements search neighbouring villages,
arrest men and sometimes women. Some of the arrested
“disappear”; others are beaten and released but only if
their families can pay a ransom. Everyday life in Chechnya.

According to the Russian government, the “antiterrorist”
operation it launched in 1999 was to have ended in March 2000, but it
still continues. This war of attrition has killed tens of thousands of
civilians, and destroyed and depopulated much of the Caucasian
republic. Unofficial sources say that the population has fallen from
1.2m in Soviet times to 400,000 now (1). Russian losses have also
reached an unsustainable level (2). In September 2001 two generals and
eight colonels were killed when their helicopter was shot down; in
January this year Russian deputy interior minister Mikhail Rudchenko
and 13 high-ranking officers died the same way. Russia is caught in a
trap and its leaders have no way out.

In a long guerrilla war such a situation should have been foreseen. In
1999 the northern Caucasus was a security problem and Russia had to do
something in Chechnya. Even without bomb attacks on apartment blocks
in Moscow and other urban centres (which some people believe were
actually the work of Russian security services), the invasion of
Dagestan by several hundred (mainly Chechen) rebels demanded a
response. But to try to solve the problem by military means alone,
declaring total war, was absurd. It shows that Russia's leaders do
not even know their own history; they have not read Lermontov or
Tolstoy (3); and that they failed to learn the lessons of the first
Chechen conflict between 1994 and 1996.

It is said that the second conflict is part of a vicious Russo-Chechen
hostility going back 200 years and more. This is a mistaken,
dangerous analysis, since it implies that Russians and Chechens are in
a permanent state of war. But in the 19th century Russia was not at
war with the Chechens as an ethnic group, but with a resistance front
of Caucasian peoples; their figurehead was Imam Shamil, an Avar from
Dagestan. The Avars are as pugnacious as the Chechens, but they have
not rebelled against Moscow since the early 1900s. Neither have other
Muslim peoples of the Caucasus: Kabardians, Circassians, Ingush or
Lezgins. Chechnya could have reached an accommodation with the new
government in Moscow.

Russia's argument that losing Chechnya would lead to the break-up
of the Russian federation, as had happened to the Soviet Union, is
also unfounded. Since the federal authorities came to an agreement
with Tatarstan in 1994, Chechnya has been the only subject of the
federation to claim total sovereignty. Moscow's massive human
rights violations and its military and political impotence have done
the most to undermine Russia's authority in the Caucasus.

It is not in Russia's interest to be bogged down in a conflict in
the Caucasus. But twice in 10 years Russia's leaders have tried to
use the explosive situation in the northern Caucasus to solve
political problems in the Kremlin. The December 1994 invasion was
ordered to improve Boris Yeltsin's prospects in the 1996 election.
In 1999 the conflict helped to create popular support for the then
unknown Vladimir Putin. True, the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen
forces under Shamil Basayev and his ally, the Jordanian Habib Abdul
Rahman Khattab, was a serious threat (Khattab belongs to the
conservative Muslim Wahhabi sect). But by responding with all-out war,
Russia chose not to confront the problems of the northern Caucasus.

In thinking that they could deal with Chechen resistance again by
concentrating more military resources in the country, the Russian
generals were clearly refusing to learn from their 1996 defeat. They
sent 35,000 troops to Chechnya in 1994; in 1999 they sent 90,000,
which is as many as served in the Soviet task force in Afghanistan.
The authorities also tried to silence media criticism. Following
hostile takeovers of the independent NTV network, whose coverage of
the previous conflict had been critical, and the purchase of the
weekly Itogi by gas giant Gazprom, a new scandal highlighted the
threat to press freedom in Moscow. TV6, the last national television
network to escape Kremlin control, was closed down by court order (4).

United in resistance

The Russian generals were also mistaken about the divisions between
Chechens. It is true that Chechnya was in a state of civil war in
1999. But the same was true in autumn 1994, when President Dzhokhar
Dudayev's authority did not in fact extend beyond the presidential
palace. That did not stop the Chechens putting their differences
aside to resist the invading Soviet forces; they have not forgotten
the mass deportations of 1944.

The antiterrorist campaign has failed to neutralise the main leaders
of the Chechen resistance. Basayev and Khattab are still leading
military operations against Russian forces. And while the Russians
have managed to get Chechnya's former mufti, Ahmad Qadirov, on
their side, their attempt to set up a local administration is unlikely
to succeed. He is the sworn enemy of Wahhabi Islam and a supporter of
the traditional Sufi tariqa or spiritual path; any government headed
by him will not survive a Russian military withdrawal. There have
already been several attempts to assassinate the former mufti and his
right-hand man Adam Deniyev was killed in a separatist bomb attack in
April 2001.

Russian army atrocities are enough to make any kind of collaboration
with Moscow out of the question for the Chechens. We are no longer in
1999 when the Chechen people would have welcomed any attempt at
stabilisation, even by Russia, after years of chaos and conflict and
the reign of warlords. But Russia's decision makers do not take
Chechen public opinion into account. How can Russia claim the Chechens
are federation citizens when its army behaves as an occupying army?

The sound of gunfire used to presage change at the head of the Russian
state; but pursuit of the conflict is becoming painful, as a constant
reminder of Russia's weakness. It is in Moscow's interest to
end the conflict. An initial meeting between Ahmed Zakayev,
representing Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov (5), and President
Vladimir Putin's representative, Viktor Kazantsev, at Moscow
airport on 18 November 2001 came to nothing; despite the rigours of
winter, the military operations intensified. Any talks will have to
tackle the difficult issues of political representation and military
control in the Caucasian republic, in particular the disarmament of
rebel troops or their absorption into the local police, and the
withdrawal of the Russian army. And even if the difficult question of
Chechnya's political status can be left out of any initial accord,
there will at least have to be agreement on it in principle.

According to Russian sources, President Putin has set two conditions
for negotiations with Maskhadov, disarmament and talks on a return to
peace (6). Maskhadov has said he is willing to negotiate with Moscow
and has distanced himself from the more hard line Chechen partisan
chiefs. “Basayev provoked the war with Russia by attacking
Dagestan,” he told the German radio station Deutsche Welle.

The Chechens' warrior spirit has won them remarkable victories
over superior Soviet firepower, but at the same time it has brought
tragedy for ordinary people. The 1994-1996 resistance failed to
produce an integrated and unified command, and that is why the
warlords were able to take over, bringing a permanent instability that
plunged Chechnya into chaos. From Russia's 1996 withdrawal to 1999
the independent republic was in complete collapse. The only economic
activities were illegal, not to say downright criminal: hostage
taking, arms trafficking or the theft of oil from the Baku-Novorossisk
pipeline.

Wanting to avoid civil war and unaware of Russian intentions,
Maskhadov did not even try to rein in the different armed groups, the
Wahhabi revolutionaries and other criminal bands (7). But after years
of disturbance and war most Chechens are looking for normalisation and
are deeply disappointed by this independence with a powerless
president and warlords having their own way. While the Chechen
resistance fought for national independence in 1994-1996, today it is
fighting more against the Russian invasion than in favour of any
political objective.

The antiterrorist war now being waged by the United States has put
Russia in an even more difficult position. True, President Putin is
trying to draw a parallel between the war in Chechnya and the US
offensive, stressing the links between the Chechen resistance's
Islamic faction and the al-Qaida network. But the Kremlin knows that
once the Afghanistan campaign is over, a new balance of power will
emerge in Central Asia, hence the sense of urgency in the Caucasus
(8). Despite the president's silence, some Russian politicians are
openly opposed to the long-term stationing of US forces in Central
Asia, while the media are already speculating about a resurgence of
Russo-American rivalry over Transcaucasia. The honeymoon is over, as
one analyst has said (9).

Pressure is mounting for Moscow to end the war. The conflict is
causing enormous losses; it has also paralysed the military reform
that Putin had promised. Moreover, it is swallowing up all of
Russia's military resources.

The only solution for Moscow is to withdraw militarily yet again. That
is its dilemma. Abandoned to unoccupied chaos and uncertainty,
post-war Chechnya is likely to be just the same as it was before; and
a Russian president who had made military victory there the
centrepiece of his election campaign will be affronted. Despite the
obvious limits of the military option, Russia's leaders have not
considered any other policy for Chechnya for 10 years now. But a
military withdrawal seems the only way to stop the chaos.

Between the Russian imperialist mindset and the bellicose Chechen
spirit, history continues to repeat itself in the Caucasus.

Notes

(1) According to Human Rights Watch, 260,000 people have been
displaced in Chechnya and 170,000 have fled to Ingushetia.

(2) According to Russian sources quoted in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of
3-4 November 2001, Russian military intervention in Chechnya in 1999
claimed 15,000 victims among the combatants, including 3,438 Russian
soldiers and 11,000 Chechen rebels. The sources make no mention of
civilian losses.

(3) See A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, Penguin,
Harmondsworth, 2001 and The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy, Everyman's
Library, London, 1994, which reflect the resistance of the Chechens,
Cherkess and other Caucasian peoples to Russian expansion.